Amhara - History and Cultural Relations

There is a paucity of reliable data about the prehistory of Ethiopia
because archaeological excavation was long prohibited. Three procedures
can be followed, however: interpretation of surface archaeological
sites, tracing ancient trade routes, and linguistic analysis. Rock
paintings resemble those of Libya; others depict cattle without humps,
suggesting an early population of cattle breeders prior to the entry
from Yemen of breeders of humped cattle (which are predominant today),
via the Bab al-Mandab. The elaborate obelisks at Aksum, 27 to 30 meters
tall, with false doors and windows (which have counterparts in ancient
Yemen), appear to fall into the Semitic period of about 500
B
.
C
. to
A
.
D
. 300.

Certain basic trade routes—for instance, the iron
route—have scarcely changed in thousands of years. Salt must
still be brought in from the coast of the Red Sea. Ivory, gold, and
slaves were brought from the south to pay for imports. Wild coffee was
brought from the south of Ethiopia to Yemen, perhaps to pay for humped
sebu
cattle.
Mashella
(guinea corn) may have originated on the western Ethiopian plateau and
spread westward from there. Foreign trade was given great impetus when
the camel was introduced to those Ethiopian regions too dry for donkeys,
about
A
.
D
. 100. There is a record of hunting expeditions by the Ptolemean rulers
of Egypt in Ethiopia. Ptolemy III (245-222
B
.
C
.) placed at the port of Adulis (near present-day Mesewa) a Greek
inscription recording that he captured elephants, and an inscribed block
of stones with magical hieroglyphs. At the same port about
A
.
D
. 60, a Greek merchant named Periplus recorded the importation of iron
and the production of spears for hunting elephants, and in
A
.
D
. 350 Aeizana, king of Aksum, defeated the Nubians and carried off iron
and bronze from Meroë.

The Abyssinian tradition of the Solomonic dynasty, as told in the
Ge'ez-language book
Kebra Nagast
(Honor of the Kings) refers to the rule of Menilek I, about 975-950
B
.
C
. It relates that he was the son of Makeda, conceived from King Solomon
during her visit to Jerusalem. Interrupted in
A
.
D
. 927 by sovereigns of a Zagwe line, the Solomonic line was restored in
1260 and claimed continuity until Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in
1974. Abyssinian churches are still built on the principle of
Solomon's temple of Jerusalem, with a Holy of Holies section in
the interior. Christianity came to Aksum in the fourth century
A
.
D
., when Greek-speaking Syrians converted the royal family. This strain
of Christianity retained a number of Old Testament rules, some of which
are observed to this day: the consumption of pork is forbidden;
circumcision of boys takes place about a week after birth; upper-level
priests consider Saturday a day of rest, second only to Sunday; weddings
preferably take place on Sunday, so that the presumed deflowering, after
nightfall, is considered to have taken place on the eve of Monday.
Ecclesiastic rule over Abyssinia was administered early on by the
archbishop of Alexandria, detached only after World War II. At the
Council of Chalcedon in
A
.
D
. 451, the theological Monophysites of Alexandria, including the
Abyssinians, had broken away from the European church; hence the
designation "Coptic."

The spread of Islam to regions surrounding it produced relative
isolation in Ethiopia from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries.
During this period, the Solomonic dynasty was restored in 1260 in the
province of Shewa by King Yekuno Amlak, who extended his realm from
Abyssinia to some Cuchitic-speaking lands south and east. Amharic
developed out of this linguistic blend. From time to time, Europeans
heard rumors of a Prester John, a Christian king on the other side of
the Muslim world. Using a vast number of serfs on feudal church
territories, Abuna (archbishop) Tekle Haymanot built churches and
monasteries, often on easily defensible hilltops, such as Debra
Líbanos monastery in Shewa, which is still the most important in
Ethiopia.

With the Muslim conquest of Somali land in 1430, the ring around
Abyssinia was complete, and recently Islamicized Oromo (Galla)
seminomadic tribes from the south invaded through the Rift Valley,
burning churches and monasteries. Some manuscripts and church paintings
had to be hidden on islands on Lake Tana. When a second wave of invaders
came, equipped with Turkish firearms, the Shewan king Lebna Dengel sent
a young Armenian to Portugal to solicit aid. Before it could arrive, the
Oromo leader Mohammed Grañ ("the lefthanded")
attacked with the aid of Arabs from Yemen, Somalis, and Danakils and
proceeded as far north as Aksum, which he razed, killing the king in
battle in 1540. His children and the clergy took refuge on and north of
Lake Tana. One year later, Som Christofo Da Gama landed at Mesewa with
450 Portuguese musketeers; the slain king's son, Galaudeos
(Claudius), fought on until he died in battle. The tide turned, however,
and in 1543 Mohammed Grañ fell in battle.

Shewa nevertheless remained settled by Oromo, who learned the
agriculture of the region. The royal family had only a tent city in what
became the town of Gonder. There the Portuguese built bridges and
castles, and Jesuits began to convert the royal family to Roman
Christianity. King Za Dengel was the first royal convert, but the
Monophysite clergy organized a rebellion that led to his removal. His
successor, King Susneos, had also been converted but was careful not to
urge his people to convert; shortly before his death in 1632, he
proclaimed religious liberty for all his subjects.

The new king, Fasilidas (1632-1667), expelled the Portuguese and
restored the privileges of the Monophysite clergy. He—and later
his son and grandson—employed workmen trained by the Portuguese
to build the castles that stand to this day. Special walled paths
shielded the royal family from common sight, but the king, while sitting
under a fig tree, judged cases brought before him. A stone-lined water
pool was constructed under his balcony, and a mausoleum entombed his
favorite horse. All these structures still exist. But the skills of
stonemasonry later fell into disuse; warfare required mobility, which
necessitated the formation of military tent cities. Portuguese
viticulture was also lost (though the name of the middle elevation
remains "Woyna Dega"), and the clergy had to import
raisins to produce sacramental wine.

Gonder had been abandoned by the Solomonic line when a usurping commoner
chieftain, Kassa, chose it as the location to have himself crowned King
Theodore in 1855. He defeated the king of Shewa and held the dynastic
heir, the boy Menilek II, hostage at his court. Theodore realized the
urgency of uniting the many ethnic groups of the country into a nation,
to prevent Ethiopia from losing its independence to European colonial
powers. Thinking that all Europeans knew how to manufacture cannons,
Theodore invited foreign technicians and, at first, even welcomed
foreign missionaries. But when the latter proved unable to cast cannons
for him and even criticized his often violent behavior, he jailed and
chained British missionaries. This led to the Lord Napier expedition,
which was welcomed and assisted by the population of Tigray Province.
When the fort of Magdalla fell, Theodore committed suicide. A
conservative Tigray chief, Yohannes, was crowned at Aksum.

In 1889 the Muslim mahdi took advantage of the disarray in Ethiopia; he
razed Gonder and devastated the subprovince of Dembeya, causing a severe
and prolonged famine. Meanwhile, the Shewan dynastic heir, Menilek II,
had grown to manhood and realized that Ethiopia could no longer isolate
itself if it were to retain independence. He proceeded, with patient
persistence, to unify the country. As an Amhara from Shewa, he
understood his Oromo neighbors and won their loyalty with land grants
and military alliances. He negotiated a settlement with the Tigray. He
equipped his forces with firearms from whatever source, some even from
the Italians (in exchange for granting them territory in Eritrea).

His policies were so successful that he managed to defeat the Italian
invasion at Adwa, in 1896, an event that placed Ethiopia on the
international map diplomatically. Empress Taitu liked the hot mineral
springs of a district in Shewa, even though it was in an Oromo region,
and the emperor therefore agreed to build his capital there, naming it
"Addis Ababa" (new flower). When expanding Addis Ababa
threatened to exhaust the local fuel supply, Menilek ordered the
importation of eucalyptus trees from Australia, which grew rapidly
during each three-month rainy season.

Menilek II died in 1913, and his daughter Zauditu became nominal head; a
second cousin, Ras Tafari Makonnen, became regent and was crowned King
of Kings Haile Selassie I in 1930. He made it possible for Ethiopia to
join the League of Nations in 1923, by outlawing the slave trade. One of
his first acts as emperor was to grant his subjects a written
constitution. He allied himself by marriage to the Oromo king of Welo
Province. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Emperor Haile
Selassie appeared in Geneva to plead his case before the League, warning
that his country would not be the last victim of aggression. The Italian
occupation ended in 1941 with surrender to the British and return of the
emperor. During succeeding decades, the emperor promoted an educated
elite and sought assistance from the United States, rather than the
British, in various fields. Beginning in about 1960, a young, educated
generation of Ethiopians grew increasingly impatient with the slowness
of development, especially in the political sphere. At the same time,
the aging emperor, who was suffering memory loss, was losing his ability
to maintain control. In 1974 he was deposed, and he died a year later.
The revolutionary committees, claiming to follow a Marxist ideology,
formed military dictatorships that deported villagers under conditions
of great suffering and executed students and each other without legal
trials. Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam fled Ethiopia in May 1991 as
Eritrean and Tigrayan rebel armies approached from the north. The
country remains largely rural; traditional culture patterns and means of
survival are the norm.

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